Daily Report: Time to Guard Your Cellphone Number

The cell phone number has become as important as the Social Security number.CreditMathew Scott for The New York Times

By Jim Kerstetter

Nov. 14, 2016

If there is one thing that has caused me regret in last week’s election, it is including my mobile phone number in my voter enrollment form after moving back to California from the East Coast.

There wasn’t much — or any — activity around the presidential election in California, but we were lucky enough to have dozens of state propositions and local measures to consider. Marijuana, state bonds, a local soda tax — you name it and we had a chance to vote on it.

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We also had the opportunity to receive an endless streams of texts and phone calls in the weeks leading up to the election. It would take an astonishing civic sensibility to not be annoyed by all this attention.

As Steve Lohr wrote over the weekend, the cell number has become as important as the Social Security number. It’s the backup for passwords, on all sorts of forms, and connected to all sorts of databases. People feverishly protect their Social Security numbers, but they often don’t think twice about handing out that cellphone number.

They should reconsider being so free with that number. Trust me on this.